Where I Laid Me Down To Sleep

Chapter 10 ~ abandoned

Chapter 10 ---- abandoned (working title)

(starting to write the really hard part of the story now, so thanks for sticking with it) ps: there are typos I have to fix in it! -- but needs word counts for Nanowrimo first...

*Everything beautiful is abandoned,* Sandman thought as he drove away from The Barrington Towers.  *Every fucking thing.*

He hadn’t stayed to watch as  Mark and Tim slammed the doors of the truck, and he hadn’t seen Natasha drive away.  All he felt in that moment were the tracks of a few hot tears coursing down his face.  He wiped them away.  He would shoot something, and that would make the pain go away.  He hadn’t thought that she would really leave.  She had.  He drove around for hours looking at locations before he went home.

“Zero Gallery called,” said Cathleen, as she brushed her long hair before the mirror in the bathroom that night. 

“What?”

“You sold one to a collector.”

“Fabulous.”

“Well, aren’t we going to celebrate?”

“I’m not in the mood.  I’m exhausted.”

He curled himself into bed and pulled the covers up tightly around him.  A helicopter rattled the sky above, chasing someone in the dark lost night of the city of lost angels.  He shook a little, trembling under the blanket.

“I’m freezing.  Can’t we get some new bedding for this place?”

“I haven’t got time.”

“It’s cold.”

“Go pick something out if you want it.”

“I need you to help me.”

“I haven’t got time.   You know I have to finish this dissertation, and all these reports, and I have to go back east next week.”

It was a long time before he said anything, and when he did, it was just: “Goodnight.”

Cathleen Sandman looked at herself in the mirror.  She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she had slept with Greg at that arty farty party they had been to.  She had known he wanted to for months.  Those little squeezes as she passed him in the kitchen -- the way his fingers trailed across her ass by accident.  It had been often.  Besides, she was tired of the way John was in bed.  At least Greg paid attention to her.  *When was the last time John had?* she thought as she pulled the brush through the last golden strands.  Then she smiled at herself.

She never said a word as she slipped under the covers, but one of her hands reached back and tried to cup one of his.  There was no movement.  John was asleep, into those thick sleeps he fell into.  The ones where he would wake up in a nightmare with a flash of terror.  It was what he had seen during the war that caused those.  Sometimes she did her best to hold him while he shook.

She was gone before he woke up.  The scent of the coffee was all that was left of her in the kitchen.

He walked out into the garden and looked at the roses, as the light wind blew through the leaves.  They were full, and beautiful, and somehow they were all he had to counteract the effects of the city.  He cut one, not thinking, and then realized he wouldn’t be seeing Tasha.  So he tossed it over the fence into the alley behind their bungalow.  She always chastised him for cutting them and bringing them in the house.  They were for the neighbors, so she could gloat.

* * *

The traffic had been long, and finally Tasha and Mark and Tim had arrived.

“We can unpack in the morning,” Tim said. “What’s for dinner Mom?”